Month: November 2012

The Walking Dead is a visceral hard-hitting show. There’s head decapitations, people being ripped to pieces, and body parts being hacked off every week. I love it. There was this one scene during last night’s episode, (Spoiler Alert) that made me think for a moment.

Maggie, a female character, was told to take her top off. The camera shows her back once she gets her bra off. She covers up her breasts with her hands for the rest of the scenes with her. I couldn’t help but think of all the stuff this show has done.

We’ve seen a cool horse be horribly devoured by a pack of walkers. I watched Rick shoot a zombie version of a little girl that they were searching for. Shane shot Otis and left him behind to be eaten by a pack of zombies. I’ve seen Carl be shot. The viewers watched Laurie be brutally cut open with a knife. In the season opener, Hershell’s leg is cut off in a scene that had a room of grown men cringe.

But we can never be shown a human female nipple. That’s just weird to me. I’m not demanding it. I’m not angry about them not showing it. I understand why. It’s just somewhat funny that we can see the absolute worst violence on TV yet the Walking Dead can never show us that part of the human body.

I liked this episode.

This season has been the strongest so far for the show. It does suffer from the one character’s plot is less interesting than the other’s syndrome with Andrea in the Governor’s camp and Rick in the prison. That’s nothing major. I look forward to next week’s midseason finale and the future of the series.

I try to tolerate people’s religious beliefs to the best of my ability, but there are still some things about certain monotheistic religions that really make my blood boil.

Every time there’s a horrible tragedy, priests come out of the woodwork to justify the horrible event. Somehow all the death, destruction and other pain was good for the community in the end.

It’s every terrible event. Whether it’s a shooting, a natural disaster, or a disease outbreak, it was always better for us in the end. Listening or reading comments like these is like listening to a friend justify a bad purchase or investment.

Eventually you can convince your friend that they did do something wrong. You cannot do the same with these apologists.

The believer in a faith cannot ever admit that their infinitely good and perfect divine being can be wrong so they must rationalize the world around this fact or blame all bad things on the devil. I hate reading these articles trying to see the bright side of just atrocious killings so they can continue to believe in this being.

They look for every inch. If someone survived a terrifying shooting, thank god they survived. If they died, thank god they didn’t live and suffer or thank god you weren’t there. No matter what happens, God is always right and he wins.

I get why people do this but I think they should be a little more critical of God. Instead of accepting bad things, complain. Maybe God would try to improve then. If you’re just going to follow him, no matter what, why would he would even try?

Instead of rationalizing tragedies to fit the logic of your religious book, why not threaten to worship another God? Like Thor. He’s pretty cool. He’s got a hammer and beats up aliens. He’s even got his own movie. If you go to another God with your prayers and worship, the Christian God will have to clean up his act. He needs people to worship. If not, he’ll just be some infinitely powerful and divine being that nobody cares about or loves. Everyone wants to be loved even God.

Unless you think this is the best possible world ever and God does his best work. I’d disagree. There’s no magic. There’s no dragons or any cool stuff. This world is boring. Think of how this world could be improved if we could fly or teleport or absorb the power of the Xandarin world mind into our bodies and become human rockets.

Challenge your divine being to do more. Do not settle. If you don’t get what you want, take your worship elsewhere. Brand loyalty is overrated.

If someone asked me who my best friend was, I wouldn’t be able to give an answer. I do have friends that I like more than others. Everyone does.

People don’t like to tier their friends. I do. It helps me keep my priorities straight. If a lower tier friend asks me to hang out, I may say no. I need to keep myself open in case a high tier friend decides to spend the day with me.

People don’t like to admit that there’s different levels of friends. There’s those friends that you only hang out with because your other friends like them. They’re not bad people. They’re just on a different level than the others. They’ll never ask you and them to just hang out. That’s fine. It’s just the nature of the relationship.

I had this all figured when I was a wee lad in elementary school. Not all friends are created equal. There would always be one friend to stand above the rest, the best friend. They were the funniest. They were the coolest. They were the person you liked being around the most.

I met my best friend for many years in first grade. There was a coloring project of sort. The class was to separate into two groups, rainbow and red. I picked red because I loved Power Rangers and the red one was my favorite. Only one other kid picked red with me. He told me that he liked Power Rangers. That was it. We were best buddies. I went to his birthday party later that year. I made a huge mess. I left all his Power Ranger stuff all over the floor.

Those early years it’s easy to be best friends. As a kid, there’s never any real conflict. Our friendship went on until things changed. He wasn’t interested in Power Rangers anymore. I remember talking to him about in one of the later elementary school years. He told me he gave away all his power ranger stuff because he was too old for it. But still we continued on as best buddies.

It wasn’t until sixth grade that everything changed. Puberty hits and the whole dynamic for everything in school changed. Children were a lot meaner and petty. There were more fights in the school. The drugs that seemed like a boogeyman in a closet were soon entering our world. We didn’t talk as much anymore. We were separated in different home rooms. He made new friends. He even got himself a girlfriend. I remember in sixth grade, he and I had this conversation. He told me that I should get a girlfriend. I didn’t quite understand what he meant. I had friends that were girls, wasn’t that good enough? He lost interest in talking to me soon after that.

I remember being teased during cafeteria lunch one day. I told them who my best friend was. They all said that he had a new best friend now and it wasn’t me.

Oh.

I didn’t think that sort of thing stopped. I thought best friends were forever. But I was wrong. I was usually wrong back then about things.

In high school, we had a class together and it was pretty fun. It was nostalgic for both of us but that was it. Just nostalgia.

I don’t think we’ll ever really talk again. Maybe we’ll run into each other and make small talk. Talk about our college experiences and what we’ve done since high school. Then it’ll be “Nice seeing you.” and we’ll go our separate ways.